WPR21LA086 · Hughes 269C
Trike Industries Hughes 269C · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From Spanish Fork Municipal Airport/Woodhouse Field (SPK) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR21LA086
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Hughes 269C
- Aircraft type
- Hughes 269
- Category
- Helicopter
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N7480F
- Operator
- Trike Industries
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Spanish Fork Municipal Airport/Woodhouse Field (SPK), Spanish Fork, UTTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 44 years (built 1977)
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Landing
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Nose over/nose down
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot receiving instruction was preparing for his upcoming checkride for a rotorcraft certificate. About 50 minutes into the flight, the flight instructor announced a simulated engine failure, and the pilot receiving instruction reduced throttle, lowered collective, and entered an autorotation. When the helicopter approached 500 ft above ground level (agl) and the instructor advised the pilot to recover, they realized that the engine had stopped producing power. The instructor took control of the helicopter about 200 ft agl and started to flare about 30 ft agl. He raised collective to cushion the landing, but the helicopter still had forward airspeed when it touched down on the soft ground, which resulted in a noseover.
Postaccident examination of the helicopter did not reveal any preimpact mechanical anomalies with the airframe or the engine. An engine run showed that with the throttle at the idle detent, the engine cut out intermittently, and the engine idle speed was about 500 rpm lower than the minimum idle speed given in the Pilot’s Operating Manual (POH) for the helicopter. However, the engine power could be advanced from idle to higher speeds, and the engine never lost power as occurred during the accident flight.
The flight instructor reported that the pilot receiving instruction would rapidly reduce throttle for practice autorotations, and the POH warned against rapid throttle reduction as it could result in a sudden stoppage of the engine; however, given that the pilot receiving instruction had been following this practice throughout the flight and during previous flights without issue, it is unlikely his rapid throttle reduction led to the loss of power. The investigation was unable to determine the reason for the loss of engine power.
The pilot receiving instruction had started his recovery from about 500 ft agl, which required the instructor to re-establish the autorotation following the loss of power. Although the instructor was successful in re-establishing autorotation, he was unable to fully arrest the helicopter’s forward motion before touchdown.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power during a practice autorotation for an undetermined reason.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR21LA086
- Event ID
- 20210113102524
- Case number
- WPR21LA086
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: aaaf97191ac5ecb81ae6f0cbe32d335e3e10c95dbbc9a5aa2578321f50edd20d; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:33:40.841Z.